Every khutbah that follows the Prophetic tradition begins with the warning that the worst of all human affairs are innovations in religion — for every innovation is a source of misguidance, and all misguidance leads to the Hellfire. This is not a distant theological abstraction; it is a living reality that Muslims navigate each December as the world celebrates Christmas, and as many within the Muslim community wrestle with whether or how to engage. Understanding bid’ah — religious innovation — and its historical manifestations across both Christianity and Islam is not an exercise in arrogant judgment of others, but an act of spiritual clarity: a safeguarding of iman rooted in authentic guidance from Allah ﷻ and His Messenger ﷺ, so that we worship Allah as He prescribed, not as our desires or cultural pressures dictate.
What Is Bid’ah? Defining Religious Innovation in Islamic Scholarship
Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him) defined bid’ah according to the shari’ah as “worshipping Allah in ways that Allah has not prescribed” — derived from the Qur’anic verse, “Or have they partners with Allah who have instituted for them a religion which Allah has not ordained?” (al-Shooraa 42:21). This definition draws a sharp and necessary line: it is not simply doing something new in worldly customs and habits, but introducing into acts of worship what was never authorised by Allah or demonstrated by His Messenger ﷺ or the rightly-guided Caliphs. Islamic scholarship divides bid’ah into two categories — that which constitutes kufr (disbelief), such as denying established pillars of the faith or attributing to Allah attributes that contradict His perfection, and that which does not reach kufr but remains sinful and blameworthy, such as certain administrative changes that do not strike at the foundations of ‘aqeedah. There is no such thing in Islam as bid’ah hasanah — a “good innovation” — because the Prophet ﷺ left this religion complete, and adding to it in the name of worship is not piety but presumption. The correct response to those who commit bid’ah is to call them to truth with wisdom and clarity, not hostility; public denunciation is reserved for those who are proven stubborn and arrogant in rejecting the truth after it has been presented fairly.
- Bid’ah in the religious sense means introducing into worship practices with no basis in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, or the way of the Khulafa’ al-Rashidoon — not worldly customs and habits, which are a separate matter.
- No “good innovation” exists in Islam — the Prophet ﷺ explicitly declared all innovation in religion to be misguidance, regardless of the sincerity of the person committing it.
- Kufr-level bid’ah includes denying well-known obligations, declaring lawful what is prohibited, or holding beliefs about Allah or His Book that contradict the Qur’an.
- Lesser bid’ah does not expel a person from Islam but is still sinful and must be corrected with knowledge and patience.
- The approach to innovators is to invite them to the truth gently; boycott is only warranted in cases of kufr-level bid’ah, and only when it genuinely serves a meaningful benefit and does not push the person deeper into error.
“I urge you to adhere to my way (Sunnah) and the way of the rightly-guided successors who come after me. Hold fast to it and bite onto it with your eyeteeth, and beware of newly-invented matters — for every newly-invented matter is an innovation, and every innovation is going astray.” — Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
Christmas, the Mawlid, and the Pagan Roots of Religious Innovation
Christmas is precisely the kind of classical example this warning was meant to address — an innovation so entrenched over centuries that it masquerades as divine tradition. Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) never taught Christmas; his disciples never celebrated it; it appears nowhere in the Gospels. For more than three hundred years after Jesus, no Christian community observed it, because early Christians understood that birthday celebrations were a distinctly pagan custom — observed by the Pharaohs and pagan rulers of antiquity, rooted in the belief that one’s birth anniversary was a day of spiritual vulnerability when evil spirits gathered, and that candles and light could drive them away. This is the origin of the Christmas tree (brought indoors from Scandinavian traditions of worshipping tree-gods who were believed to inhabit evergreens — the only trees that stayed green through winter and were therefore considered symbols of the everlasting), the Christmas lights (originally literal candles placed on those trees to ward off evil spirits), the holly wreaths (directly from the Roman Saturnalia — a harvest festival of gift-giving and worship dedicated to Saturn, the god of the harvest), and even Sunday worship itself (shifted from the Sabbath to honour Apollo, the Roman sun-god and son of Zeus, whose veneration gave Sunday its very name). As Christianity travelled from Jerusalem through Greece and into Rome, it absorbed pagan Greek theology — the concept of the “Son of God,” the divine Logos — and Roman festive calendars, until December 25th, the date of the Saturnalia, was assigned as the birth date of Christ with no historical or scriptural basis whatsoever. The same pattern of cultural imitation — watching another community celebrate their prophet’s birth with great fanfare and wanting to do the same or more — led to the introduction of Mawlid an-Nabi into the Muslim world four hundred years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, not by scholars of the Sunnah, but by the Fatimid (Shi’ite) rulers of Egypt. The day they chose was not even confirmed as the Prophet’s birthday — historians of Islam are not agreed upon it, and Allah in His wisdom concealed that date precisely to prevent this kind of veneration, just as He concealed the exact birthday of Prophet ‘Isa (peace be upon him). The only authentic Islamic guidance we have is that the Prophet ﷺ fasted on Mondays and, when asked about it, said it was the day on which he was born — and this voluntary fast is the Sunnah way of honouring that day, not with lights, music, qawwali, and poetry that — through the slow drift that always accompanies bid’ah — ends up attributing to the Prophet ﷺ knowledge and attributes that belong to Allah alone.
- Christmas has no basis in the teachings of Prophet Jesus — it was not celebrated for over three centuries after him, and its symbols (tree, candles, holly, gift-giving) trace directly to Roman and Scandinavian paganism.
- Paul reshaped Christianity, not Jesus — he coined the term “Christians,” introduced theological frameworks borrowed from pagan Greek philosophy, and set the faith on a trajectory that absorbed Roman religious customs wholesale.
- Saying “Merry Christmas” is itself part of the ritual — it is not neutral social etiquette. A Muslim who does not buy a tree or hang lights but says “Merry Christmas” has still participated in the rites of the celebration. Respectful alternatives like “Happy Holidays” are perfectly available.
- The Mawlid has no prophetic foundation — it originated under political rulers, not Islamic scholarship, and over time led directly to forbidden acts (music, mixed gatherings) and dangerous theological drift (invoking the Prophet ﷺ as though he possessed divine attributes).
- Fasting on Mondays is the authentic way to honour the Prophet’s ﷺ birthday — an act he himself practiced and explained, requiring no innovation beyond what he demonstrated.
- Innovation breeds further deviation — bid’ah is not static; it compounds. What begins as “just honouring the Prophet” ends with poetry that calls upon him as though he were omniscient, and plaques in masajid that place his name alongside Allah’s as an object of supplication.
Tawhid: The Islamic Answer to Shirk, Innovation, and False Worship
“Shirk is of two types: major shirk, which puts a person beyond the pale of Islam, and lesser shirk. Major shirk is every type of worship directed to other than Allah — prayer, supplication, sacrifice, or reliance. Lesser shirk includes swearing oaths by other than Allah, or performing acts of worship so that people will see — for Allah has said: ‘I am so self-sufficient that I am in no need of having an associate. Thus he who does an action for someone else’s sake as well as Mine will have that action renounced by Me to him whom he associated with Me.'” — Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Uthaymeen, drawing from the authentic hadith (Muslim, no. 2985)
At the theological heart of all this lies Tawhid — the absolute, uncompromising oneness of Allah ﷻ — and it is precisely this that Christmas celebrations, saint veneration, and innovation-driven rituals all ultimately threaten. Allah has no beginning and no end; He was never born and He does not give birth, for to attribute parenthood or birth to the Creator is to confine the Eternal within the limits of the created — a contradiction so grave that the Qur’an tells us the heavens and the earth were nearly torn apart by the human claim that Allah has begotten a son. A Muslim who understands Tawhid clearly cannot celebrate a festival premised on God having been born on December 25th. Nor can a Muslim content themselves with a plaque in the masjid reading “Ya Muhammad” alongside “Ya Allah” — as though the beloved Prophet ﷺ, whom we honour with our salawat and follow in every aspect of our lives, shares in the divine attributes of the One who created and sent him. The path that Islam offers is clear and illuminated: seek Islamic knowledge from those who are qualified to give it, distinguish firmly between the pure religion of Allah and the accumulated customs of men, convey that truth to colleagues and neighbours and friends with gentleness and wisdom rather than confrontation, and continually renew within ourselves the unshakeable conviction that Allah is One, that He has no partner, no equal, no son, and that He was never born — so that every act of worship we offer remains a direct, unmediated, sincere act of devotion to Him alone. May Allah ﷻ strengthen our faith, protect us from all forms of innovation and shirk, guide our communities to the purity of Tawhid, and grant us the wisdom to love our Prophet ﷺ exactly as he taught us to love him — through following his Sunnah, not embellishing upon it.
